The Seat Alhambra - ahead of it's class
At Hughes SEAT we always want our customers to be fully satisfied with the products they buy from us, and we understand that customers often check reviews before committing to a purchase. Here is a recent review of the SEAT Alhambra from Autoexpress, the review is based on a long-term test meaning that it is more definitive than the review you would normally find published.
At the last count, the Seat Alhambra has won more glittering prizes than the movie Titanic (seven in the UK alone, but also garnering best MPV nods throughout Europe – including Germany). But thankfully, this is no sinking ship. Far from it. Out there among the Continent’s car-buying public, the new Alhambra is proving to be a fine synthesis of family-sized function, form, real-world practicality and optional electric sliding doors. And that’s why we’re here, speccing up an Alhambra as my wife and I welcome our second child to the world. Is it just a Sharan with a few hundred quid knocked off merely because of the badge?
Sales of the seven-seater Alhambra have trebled in 2011 against the previous 12 months, says Seat, so plenty of motorists have become smitten. Although we want to find out if you can really fall in love with a car as big-boned as this. First, we will have to choose wisely when it comes to marrying standard spec to Seat’s jam-packed option list.
Eschewing the lure of option overkill, where a car groans and puffs under the weight of its own technology, I’ve started with a base of middling SE trim. There are over 50 ‘highlights’ of the standard equipment that SE affords you, including such unmissable delights as rear window wiper and washer and electronic handbrake. Grab you yet? No? How about we dig deeper, as you also get – ‘gratis’ – cruise, Bluetooth, steering wheel phone and audio controls and stop/start.
We’ve grafted all this onto the most popular engine choice, the 138bhp 2.0 TDi Ecomotive (which we’ve opted to take with the DSG gearbox with flappy paddles). How much? £27,875. And then, by jove, we start to get into the really exciting stuff. Okay, so ‘exciting’ and Winter Pack (£295) is pushing it but for that you get heated front seats and heated front washer nozzles. An extra of £450 gives me the standard ish Seat Sound System but with Park Assist to wow the neighbours with.
With our eldest boy now touching one metre tall we’ve taken the plunge on an integrated child seat (£195) and the Cargo Pack (£325) looks a good choice as we think the Alhambra will spend most of its time with us operating on five seats only, with the rear row disengaged to give us a Wembley-sized boot. The Cargo Pack comes with a number of fancy nets and partitions so you can make the very most out of your aft stowage.
We’ve got the car over the depths of the British winter (not that it really has arrived yet in the London area), so £445 seems an appropriate, if a little expensive, use of our budget in order to secure a heated front windscreen. Experience with Volvo XC60 and Vauxhall Meriva long-termers has sold me on the benefits of a full-length panoramic glass roof, both for vision and ad hoc planespotting for kids, big and small. On the Alhambra that means ticking the Panorama Pack which, for its £795, also gives us 17in Kosta alloys… oh, and door and dashboard decorative inserts. Hussar!
Finally the coup de grâce – if my experience with a 170PS Alhambra this summer is anything to go by – is to have plumped for powered tailgate and sliding rear side doors. They are fancy, they are ‘trick’ (as they say in the modified world) but they are unfailingly useful. They make pouring two little boys into a car less of a work of art but something resembling fun instead. And that, for £31,375, is your lot for now.
If this isn’t the start of a beautiful relationship, then I’ll eat my standard spec sun visor (with illuminated vanity mirror).
By Stephen Worthy
